4 comments:

It ain't going to happen for you. Just give up. Marriage has been around since the beginning and it has never ever been gay. What gives you the right to change the definition of what marriage has been for over 5,000 years or so? Since when does 3% get to tell the rest how to live?

Well my friend, it already has happened for me thankfully. I was married in Canada earlier this year, and live here with all the rights and responsibilities that it entails.

As for your insinuation about changing the definition of marriage...I would encourage you to read more of my posts on this topic, they are not hard to scroll down and read.

And yes you are right, marriage has been around since the beginning, but I would bet that if we took the "original" definition of marriage, your own marriage would most likely be illegitimate as well. Thats they key, words and meanings change over time. There is no one set meaning for a word or an idea.

Chris, you need to educate yourself about the history of same-sex marriages "since the beginning"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions

While it is a relatively new practice that same-sex couples are being granted the same form of legal marital recognition as commonly used by mixed-sexed couples, there is a long history of recorded same-sex unions around the world.[2] Various types of same-sex unions have existed, ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions. It is believed that same-sex union was a socially recognized institution at times in Ancient Greece and Rome,[2] some regions of China, such as Fujian, and at certain times in ancient European history.[3] These gay marriages continued until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. A law in the Theodosian Code (C. Th. 9.7.3) was issued in 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. This law prohibited same-sex marriage in ancient Rome and ordered that those who were so married were to be executed. [4]

… never did the founding generations expect that we might see the advent of a system where a simple appeal to a majority could result in any whim the majority might decide to assert.

A main concern of the founding fathers was to create a system that was sufficiently balanced and thoughtful so as to buffer against one group exerting its will upon another. This to them, was nothing other than mob rule...

Throughout history democracies have inevitably fractured and failed. Even the Greeks felt that a democracy was impossible in populations greater than 100,000 members. Not only are we so much larger but more heterogeneous making this even more treacherous.

Alexis De Toqueville, a Frenchman who came to America in the opening decades of the nineteenth century to study Democracy in America, in his objective assessment remained very concerned that our system had a potential to allow for something he called the Tyranny of the Majority. That is to say he was concerned that merely by being a majority one group could exert its will upon another, even restrict its civil liberties and rights.

Unfortunately, the referendum system in the State of California has become the mechanism for actualizing precisely this tyranny. The California Supreme Court determined that the argument against same sex marriage was untenable.

The opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, cited the Court's 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp where the state's interracial marriage ban was held unconstitutional. It found that "equal respect and dignity" of marriage is a "basic civil right" that cannot be withheld from same-sex couples, that sexual orientation is a protected class like race and gender, and that any classification or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the California State Constitution (source: Wikipedia).

In other words it was the concerted opinion of the judicial authority that the logic used against interracial marriage was the same as that, which was being used against same sex marriages. In spite of this very clear understanding of the law and the logic of prejudice, the response rendered by the referendum system with the passage of Proposition 8 was: “too bad”.

Now my point here is not to get into whether or not gay marriage is good, right or should even be included in the definition of what we consider marriage. My concern is that the referendum system in California can rescind the civil rights of a minority group, independent of the operation of other governmental authority.

Abraham Lincoln famously argued in his debates with Stephen Douglas that there are certain things that the majority simply cannot decide. We simply could not allow for a majority to decide that it is acceptable to enslave another population of humans no matter how substantial that majority.

He famously quipped that “squatter sovereignty’s” right to determine whether or not a state should be free or slave was based on an argument that was thinner that the soup made from the shadow of a pigeon that was starved to death! And so are the arguments flying about today to justify and legitimate Prop 8 and the Referendum system from which it was unleashed.

I ask my fellow citizens to give this careful thought. The protection against the tyranny of the majority has been an important consideration throughout the history of our government and we have quietly allowed, out of our own ignorance and apathy, a very important threshold to be crossed. A majority has restricted the basic civil rights of a minority. Beware, it may be your rights next to be trampled merely because there are enough people who think it should be so.